NYC Islamic Terror Attacks Up 243% Under Mamdani

Worst surge in New York City terrorism in almost a decade.

The last time an Islamic terrorist attack was carried out in New York City before Mamdani was in Times Square on the last day of 2022.

In the 7 months since Mamdani took office, there have already been two terror attacks.

The mass stabbing in Manhattan by an ex-con shouting “Allahu Akbar” followed a previous attack on a protest rally against Islamization at the mayoral residence of Gracie Mansion by two Muslim teenagers throwing homemade bombs.

In previous years, Christian Sturdivant, a convert to Islam, had been arrested on December 31, 2025, over a New Year’s Eve stabbing spree plot in New York City which, had it been carried out, would have taken place hours before Mamdani took office.

Sturdivant had posted, “May Allah curse the cross worshipers.”

Muhammad Shahzeb Khan, a Pakistani Muslim operating in Canada, had plotted to mark the Hamas atrocities of Oct 7 with a terror attack against Jewish synagogues in Brooklyn on the same date in 2024.

Both of these religiously themed Muslim attacks, one aimed at Jews and one at Christians, were a once-a-year occasion, but there have already been two Islamic terror attacks in just the first 7 months of Mamdani’s reign, with possibly more to come before the first year is even out.

This is a shocking increase of 243% in terror attacks across just two and a half years.

3 out of 4 Islamic terrorist plots in New York City in the last three years took place after Mamdani’s election ‘victory’. What role did his campaign and election play in emboldening the Islamic terrorists who plotted them is an important question in understanding the terror surge.

A surge that some are already calling the ‘Mamdani Effect’.

Furthermore it is important to once again emphasize that the Muslim terror plots in 2024 and 2025 remained plans and were not executed, while the two attacks under Mamdani were.

We have to go all the way back to 2022 to find a successfully implemented Muslim attack.

To find a year where there were not just one but two Muslim terror attacks, we have to go all the way back to 2017 during which Sayfullo Saipov, an Uzbek Muslim who had scored a Diversity Immigrant Lottery visa, rammed his car into numerous people in Manhattan, killing 8 and wounding 13, and Akayed Ullah, a Bangladeshi Muslim, whose uncle had also won a Diversity Immigrant Lottery visa, tried to detonate a pipe bomb in the New York City subway.

2017 was a record year for Islamic terrorist attacks because after years of coddling ISIS under Obama, the Trump administration had unleashed a ruthless campaign that broke the terror group. This led to a wave of global attacks by Muslims in support of the organization they believed had been chosen by Allah to destroy non-Muslims and usher in a new Caliphate.

There were no global events that should have led to a similar wave of Sunni attacks in 2026 and while Islamic terrorists continue to carry out attacks, there’s been no significant global surge.

And yet Islamic terrorist attacks are up 243% in New York City with the single worst surge of attacks in almost a decade. Whatever is causing this can only be attributed to New York City.

And it cannot be a mere coincidence that 3 of the 4 terror plots in the last three years line up with the Mamdani campaign.

Freedom Center Investigates had previously documented Mamdani’s ties to terrorism including his visit to the Al-Taqwa Mosque, which used to be under NYPD surveillance, embracing its religious leader, Imam Siraj Wahhaj, an unindicted co-conspirator in the WTC bombing, who called America “filthy”, preached “I will never ever tell people, ‘don’t be violent, that is not the Islamic way.’ The violence has to be selected” and declared that getting involved in “politics is a weapon in the cause of Islam”. His son was later charged in a terrorism plot. Mamdani had also joined ‘prayers’ at the Islamic Society of Bay Ridge whose imam had been caught on video praying for victory for Hamas, imploring “Allah to make them strong and guide their shooting.”

Mamdani had repeatedly spoken out to excuse and cover for Islamic terrorists on social media

His transition team and staff included multiple terror lawyersincluding Mamdani’s Chief Counsel, Ramzi Kassem, who had claimed that 9/11 was due to the “resentment these terrorists felt towards the United States” as a result of “our country’s policies” and argued that “terrorism is but one of many reactions to oppression and dispossession and not their cause.”

In Lebanon, Kassem had boasted about throwing stones at Israelis.

Mamdani’s political guru, Linda Sarsour, had bragged, “I would be honored to die a martyr” and, as Middle East Forum noted,she was involved in an organization a Hamas front group had tried to direct funds to. Mamdani’s first endorsement, Aber Kawas, now the Democrat nominee for state senate, had described an Al Qaeda terrorist and Hamas fundraisers as “imprisoned heroes” and called another Muslim terrorist who plotted to bomb a synagogue as “my brother.”

Can the 243% increase in Islamic terrorist attacks in New York City really be connected to anything other than the rise of a political network openly supportive of Islamic terrorism?

Across the river, Democrats have nominated Hisham ‘Adam’ Hamawy as a congressional candidate, even though he had translated for and testified for the ‘Blind Sheikh’ linked to the World Trade Center bombing and subsequent Islamic terror plots against New York City, and even though he had volunteered for an Al Qaeda linked group.

The growing political power of the Islamic terror lobby is naturally leading to a surge in Islamic terror violence. The mobs waving Hamas and Hezbollah flags in the streets of New York City are normalizing Islamic terrorism and the more it’s normalized, the more of it there will be.

Mamdani is a symptom of how the political support for Islamic terrorism among New York and New Jersey Democrats is translating into more Islamic terrorism in the region. The more power that the political supporters of Islamic terrorism get, the worse the terrorist attacks will become.

Daniel Greenfield is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center’s Front Page Magazine.

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